Remember
by Mandy15
Summary: There is only one day where he cried for his nation.


Disclaimer: Not mine, no infringement intended.  
  
Remember  
  
Sometimes he remembers the day the planes hit.  
  
It is hard not to think about it, on a day-to-day basis. It has changed the city, the country, the world. It has changed his life as a cop, factored into his daily operations.  
  
But sometimes he simply stops, because he needs to let himself remember.  
  
Independence Day is a holiday that means little to him. For some it is about family – Eames said she was spending the day with her parents, sister and little baby Abbi. Her smile was melancholy when she said the girl's name, but Bobby knows there is hope and happiness there too.  
  
He saw family too... his mother, shut away without any acknowledgment of the date. It was a quiet time between the two of them, and he left with yet another harrowing sigh of relief. A duty of love, but a duty nonetheless.  
  
Now he sits in his apartment, music playing softly, too restless to watch television or read. No active case to puzzle over.  
  
Independence Day. He has a few memories of fireworks and hotdogs from his childhood, but since then the day of supposed celebration has been spent alone, a holiday used for rest or work. During his stint in the military, on tour in foreign countries, American days of meaning would pass him by. President's Day, Thanksgiving, Halloween... these had no meaning in a culture far from home.  
  
Once, years ago, he would have called himself unpatriotic. Aware of the dangers of overwhelming ethnocentricity, he scorned the flag bearers and the song-singers, preferring a pride in humanity, in unity.  
  
There is only one day where he cried for his nation.  
  
It was early in his partnership with Eames. Later, Bobby would wonder if that's what brought them together, bridged the gap over wariness. Enforced intimacy.  
  
He remembers dropping a cup. He remembers somebody turning the news on, but yet more crowding to the window.  
  
He remembers that time seemed interminable before common sense came through; before they remembered they were cops. That they had a duty to protect and serve.  
  
He remembers slinging his badge around his neck on a chain in plain sight, and that somewhere on the stairwell, Eames looked up at him. And where her face had only ever been hard before, it was now soft with shock and grief and fear. He remembers taking her hand and squeezing, and she squeezed back like she was never going to let go.  
  
He remembers running down the street, dodging between frozen cars, her hand still clutched tightly in his. He remembers it was a bright, beautiful morning, and he remembers looking up at a crucial moment.  
  
He remembers seeing the first building fall.  
  
Bobby didn't join the military to fight for his country. He joined to see the world, to find structure where he'd had none, and escape his mother's sickness. Still manageable then, but so grating on his nerves.  
  
He joined the force to help people – no matter who they were or where they came from. After passing both the NYPD and the FBI entrance exam, he chose to be a cop. He didn't care about federal issues, about farmers buying fertilizer and videotapes being pirated. He cared about people living and dying and hurting each other, he cared about the people in his neighbourhood being terrorised by crime.  
  
He studies his badge like he has many times before, hearing the pop of fireworks and the cheers from the party on the roof next door.  
  
Nobody was hurting each other, that day. Everybody was helping. It didn't matter who you were or what identification you did or didn't carry. Everybody helped.  
  
He remembers the sun was blocked out by a ghostly cloud, made up of ash and soot and cement. As they got closer and closer, he and Eames could hardly see with all that fine dust in the air. The second building fell, and it only got worse.  
  
It blurs.  
  
Somebody handed out masks, the type you used when you sanded your floors, and it made breathing a little easier. He remembers the day was so long, and so hard, and so thick and unbelievable, like somebody had stolen their city and replaced it with hell.  
  
Eames found cops and paramedics and some doctors that had wandered onto the street. She asked questions and yelled instructions until somebody gave her a radio and got Bobby one too, and he would go deeper into that pervasive could of dust until he found more people hurt, or in shock, and she would send somebody to him.  
  
He didn't know where they came from. They poured into the streets surrounding ground zero, wanting to help. Nurses and surgeons and people with First Aid training, people who didn't know anything about sterility and tying bandages but were willing to learn.  
  
That day went on and on, and he heard teams of firemen running past on the streets, followed the voices of the wailing injured. He swallowed dust and grit and his own sweat, listening for Eames' crackled voice on the radio.  
  
It was near dark when he found it. Half buried under the rubble that had spilled into the streets, that had fallen from nearby building. Just a little corner poking up, enough for him to recognise what it was, to get down on his knees and dig it out.  
  
A flag. Dirty and stained, one corner torn off and riddled with holes, it was an American flag. He'd cut his hands digging for it, and now blood was on the stars and stripes.  
  
On his knees in the dirt, Bobby cried for his country.  
  
Two and a half years later, Bobby looks out the window, looks up to see the last of the fireworks. Tomorrow he will go to work and trade quips with Eames – a partnership built on a day of fear and grief. She will tell him about her little niece, and the words will be stilted and yoked with unspoken emotion.  
  
She will ask him what he did, and he'll tilt his head and tell her nothing special, nothing special at all. They'll drink their crappy department coffee, and get down to work.  
  
She won't mention that she found him on the ground, weeping over the remnants of a flag, because they've /I mentioned it. She won't mention that she crouched beside him, prising his hand off the shredded material to pull him into a hug, her own eyes glittering with tears.  
  
And he won't mention that things began to get better in that moment, when she saw and she knew and responded without saying a word. That when they got up and walked away, he left the flag behind deliberately, because it was damaged beyond repair but his country would get better.  
  
They would make it better.  
  
Bobby closes the blind on the celebrations. He doesn't need a date to find pride. Not in his country, but in the people who live there. 


End file.
